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Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

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Re: Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

#181

Post by hiccuphippo »

joshstrange wrote: post #51
tambourine_man wrote: post #30

People are volunteerelly paying for their houses to be tapped for the convenience of being able to shout: play me some song. I’m so out of touch with this world it’s scary.

It's a little more than just that. Every light in my house is controlled with Alexa which is a very nice and hard to explain until you have tried it. Also my home theater system is all controllable via Alexa as well. This kind of thinking makes no sense to me. > People are voluntarily paying for their houses to be tapped for the convenience of being able to shout: play me some song. > I’m so out of touch with this wo…

Does controlling your home need sending data to an external server thought? Has no one come up with a competing product where all the processing is done in the machine itself?

Re: Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

#182

Post by djsumdog »

I've told my roommate I'm moving out if he ever buys an Alex/Google/Apple assistant device.

I have a microphone and I've been intending to get one of the open source solutions working and just tie it in to mpd, weather and a few other things. But all the processing should really be done on your own device, by hardware you own, software that's open and that you configure, and not send up to someone else's computer (aka "the cloud").

Of course non-tech people probably wouldn't bother because that's a steep curve and you're talking about more expensive devices to do on-board processing. There are some companies that are trying to make this more accessible to regular consumers. I hope we see a move in this direction.

Re: Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

#183

Post by daveFNbuck »

econochoice wrote: post #165
dustinmoorenet wrote: post #140

I have this idea of a system I would like to have in my house. It contains cameras in every room that are constantly watching where people are and relaying the coordinates to a central server. That server makes decisions on if lights should be on or if A/C should be running in that room. But I would never buy this system. I would have to make it myself. I am hopeful that open source software and hardware can produce…

From what I gather, if you need fine-grained location information in a building, you can do this without cameras and just a handful of strategically placed wireless access points. Less likely to be seen as creepy and such systems already exist. If you just need 'is a person in this room' or 'how many people are in this room' levels of data, solutions to this problem have existed for decades. No need to over complicat…

This assumes you don't leave your phone in the charger as you wander around your house.

Re: Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

#184

Post by dalbasal »

dustinmoorenet wrote: post #140

I have this idea of a system I would like to have in my house. It contains cameras in every room that are constantly watching where people are and relaying the coordinates to a central server. That server makes decisions on if lights should be on or if A/C should be running in that room. But I would never buy this system. I would have to make it myself. I am hopeful that open source software and hardware can produce…

On making, not buying...

A lot of home automation stuff seems like something that would be fun to make, but not something I really want to have. I mean, the AC might be a good energy saver (a smarter thermostat) but that's not something I want, more like something that I would buy if it was cheap and practical enough.

To some extent, this is a phenomenon of early technology. It feels full of potential, so you want to play with it but it doesn't really do anything you really need yet. The early web was ki d of like that. We made sites because we wanted to make sites, moreso than because we wanted to have them.

Home automation though... Im kind of skeptical that this goes anywhere useful. The useful examples people think of (eg remote close all the windows and lock the doors) are more about mechanisation than automation.

Re: Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

#185

Post by vortico »

thefifthsetpin wrote: post #118
nicky0 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain a bit more. What was the context of the message? was it an email? What was the subject line and the text? Was the audio an attachment or a link? A link to where...? "Amazon sent me a message" is so frustratingly vague...

Supposing that you're not tasked with resolving this problem for Amazon, why would those details matter?

So that we consumers can better understand this potentially huge vulnerability to determine if it's a bug, a "bug-feature", user error, user lying, or Amazon actually doing something evil.

Re: Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

#186

Post by ggg9990 »

ythn wrote: post #166
dustinmoorenet wrote: post #140

I have this idea of a system I would like to have in my house. It contains cameras in every room that are constantly watching where people are and relaying the coordinates to a central server. That server makes decisions on if lights should be on or if A/C should be running in that room. But I would never buy this system. I would have to make it myself. I am hopeful that open source software and hardware can produce…

Such a system would be a huge GDPR nightmare. You'd need consent from every visitor to your house to collect data on them, and also you have to delete it if they ever request you to. Best not to even try.

OK, the GDPR conversation has officially gone off the deep end. The EU does not care about your server with videos of your house.

Re: Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

#187

Post by cortesoft »

jethro_tell wrote: post #105
cortesoft wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never thought that voice control would be that useful until I had my daughter... being able to turn on the white noise, turn off the tv, play her music, etc while having my hands full of toddler is very useful.

How did we do it before? I can't even imagine. /s

Are you arguing that we should just stop creating anything new, since we clearly survived before without it? This comment could literally apply to ANY new thing.

Re: Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

#188

Post by jacquesm »

ythn wrote: post #166
dustinmoorenet wrote: post #140

I have this idea of a system I would like to have in my house. It contains cameras in every room that are constantly watching where people are and relaying the coordinates to a central server. That server makes decisions on if lights should be on or if A/C should be running in that room. But I would never buy this system. I would have to make it myself. I am hopeful that open source software and hardware can produce…

Such a system would be a huge GDPR nightmare. You'd need consent from every visitor to your house to collect data on them, and also you have to delete it if they ever request you to. Best not to even try.

Interactions between private individuals are out-of-scope.

The following processing is outside the scope of the GDPR:

- any activity outside the scope of EU law (e.g., activities of a Member State in relation to national criminal law);

- any activity performed by Member States when carrying out activities in relation to the common foreign and security policy of the EU;

- any activity performed by a natural person in the course of a purely personal or household activity;

- any processing by the EU itself;

and

- any activities performed by national authorities for the purposes of prevention, investigation, detection or prosecution of criminal offences, or performance of judicial functions.

https://gdpr-info.eu/art-2-gdpr/

Re: Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

#189

Post by crooked-v »

dustinmoorenet wrote: post #140

I have this idea of a system I would like to have in my house. It contains cameras in every room that are constantly watching where people are and relaying the coordinates to a central server. That server makes decisions on if lights should be on or if A/C should be running in that room. But I would never buy this system. I would have to make it myself. I am hopeful that open source software and hardware can produce…

https://www.home-assistant.io doesn't have computer vision, but can use motion sensors and the like to tell where people are, and use that to activate/deactivate devices. It's all open source and runs entirely locally.

Re: Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

#190

Post by nathancahill »

dustinmoorenet wrote: post #140

I have this idea of a system I would like to have in my house. It contains cameras in every room that are constantly watching where people are and relaying the coordinates to a central server. That server makes decisions on if lights should be on or if A/C should be running in that room. But I would never buy this system. I would have to make it myself. I am hopeful that open source software and hardware can produce…

Check out https://www.home-assistant.io/

Open source, gets you most of the way there.

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